Technology and education are pretty intertwined these days and nearly every teacher has a few favorite tech tools that make doing his or her job and connecting with students a little bit easier and more fun for all involved.

Yet as with anything related to technology, new tools are hitting the market constantly and older ones rising to prominence, broadening their scope, or just adding new features that make them better matches for education, which can make it hard to keep up with the newest and most useful tools even for the most tech-savvy teachers.

Here, we’ve compiled a list of some of the tech tools, including some that are becoming increasingly popular and widely used, that should be part of any teacher’s tech tool arsenal this year, whether for their own personal use or as educational aids in the classroom.

"Below are six TED Talks that each address different aspects of education. You may look at some of the titles and think “that’s not ‘my’ issue”, but each one carries an important message and is worth the few minutes it will take to watch. These talks will both get you thinking about different issues, and will make you proud, angry, sad, excited, and inspired all at the same time."

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"Newsela strives to complete two learning goals: the first is helping students improve their reading comprehension skills, and the second is teaching students about current events. The different Lexile levels open up the platform to a broad range of students who can manually adjust to the level that is right for them. Young students may find the ability to lower the Lexile level very valuable. It could enable them to understand current news more easily. Teachers may find the combinations of quizes and articles useful for testing students' reading comprehension levels."

"The Wellcome Library recently made more than100,000 drawings, photographs, paintings, and advertisements available to the world under Creative Commons licensing. The images available through the Wellcome Images library are primarily of a historic nature. You can browse the galleries or search for images by keyword."

How, indeed. Is this news that the school librarian is a "teacher's best resource?" Not to those of us in the library world. The good news is that the question is being asked by a respected entity - let's roll with it!

At the Google Teacher Academy Lisa Thumann awed me with her lively presentation on Google Search. I must do an average of 15 searches a day on a wide range of topics. I search for articles, images, power points presentations, key words, etc. but I had no idea what Google search could do for me and

Teachers really like the ability to display their iPad or their students' iPads on a projector screen. Projecting on a large screen is great for demonstrations, simulations, explanations, and showing examples. There are several ways this can be done in the classroom. Read the post for more information and for a handy chart.

"We’ve heard from a few of you that your concerns lie in the privacy arena. Since sharing photos that may be of students in your classroom should obviously be a concern – make sure your classroom account is private. You can choose to have a single account for your class, which would be the ‘safest’ way of approaching these privacy concerns. The teacher should be the only one who can vet followers – and they should only be associated with the class (parents, students, other classes in your school). Using a group hashtag for a particular project or theme is a good way to keep track of what they’re doing, eg: #edudemicclassproject14.

"The handy infographic below takes a look at ten different ways you can put Instagram to use in your classroom. Have you used it in other ways?"

"Google is usually one of the first places students turn to when tasked with an assignment. Whether it’s for research, real-time results, or just a little digital exploration … it’s important they know how to properly Google. Lucky for teachers (and students, of course), Google has a handy set of lesson plans that are just waiting to be unleashed upon the leaders of tomorrow.

"While I understand there’s a LOT more to research than just Googling, it’s important to note that this is where nearly all students start their research. Therefore, it’s a critical skill if they’re going to start down the right paths.

"Below are 15 lesson plans courtesy of Google designed to make students better online researchers. They’re organized by difficulty and meant to help students (and everyone) become better online searchers."

This is a pet peeve of mine--schools are still not teaching kids how to do this properly, with disastrous results. Whether you homeschool or send a child to school, these lessons will help them use the Internet more effectively (and responsibly) for research projects.

[…] The TeachByte graphic below is an excellent general guide for both MLA and APA citations. However, as anyone who has done any research knows, certain instances can get more complicated than general guidelines.

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